Sunday Drive: Happy Days Are Here Again

The original "President of Joy" with wife Eleanor and daughter Anna,
arriving in Warm Springs, Georgia, October 1932

 

The one song I didn't hear played at this week's convention was the one they absolutely should have played - the Democratic theme song since 1932.  Shame on them! The original version:

Barbra Streisand has made the song her own ever since the start of her career; here she sings her version for a fundraiser at her Malibu home in 1986, followed by "America the Beautiful":

 

Bonus: Newreel footage of FDR accepting the nomination at the Democratic Convemtion in Chicago in 1932 at the lowest point of the Great Depression. Delegates had reason to be cheerful about nominating Roosevelt: along with fostering economic reccovery, he was also committed to ending Prohibition (repealing the 18th Amendment). So that was a convention of "hope and joy" too, for more reasons than one.

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FDR: The First Hundred Days

The New York Times, March 5, 1933

FDR giving his first fireside chat, March 12, 1933.

I have seen nothing mentioned about this in the news media, so I'm posting for the record:  this past Saturday, March 4th, was the 90th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inauguration in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression.  The first 100 days that followed were a great turning point in our history, as FDR and a newly elected Democratic majority in both houses of Congress kick-started the New Deal, providing relief and hope to the nation.  

By a strange coincidence, Adolf Hitler had come to power in Germany just a few weeks earlier; both men had a rendezvous with destiny, as yet unforeseen.

FDR's decisive actions and his compassionate, optimistic, encouraging fireside chats over the new-fangled radio system made a profound impression on many millions of Americans that was still vividly remembered by my parents and grandparents a generation later, when I came along.  As my little grandmother said, in her homely way, "If it hadn't-a been for Roosevelt, we'd have all perished to death."

His predecessor, the Republican Herbert Hoover, was a decent, highly intelligent man who had engineered food relief for starving European nations in the aftermath of World War I; but Hoover failed the test of history when it came to helping his own fellow citizens stricken by the Depression.  Then as now, upscale Republicans balked at providing any concrete help to the poor and needy, putting their own profits and pocketbooks first.  Ninety years later, we see that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Here is Part I of a very well-made documentary shown on the History Channel in 2005, covering Roosevelt's presidency from his first inauguration down to the beginning of World War II.  I've watched it several times, and recommend it to my truckbuddies. I don't know where Part II is; I can't find it on YouTube.

 

P. S. - Since the first of the year, on sunny days I've been taking little walks around the neighborhood, which is in the older part of town.  One day I noticed an impression in the concrete sidewalk:

WORKS PROGRESS

ADMINISTRATION

1 9 3 8

That stretch of sidewalk is still in fine shape, as if it were laid out yesterday:  one of FDR's many enduring legacies to the nation.

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Our Rendezvous with Destiny

Treason is afoot in the land.  The New York Times sounds the alarm this morning:

Click to enlarge.

And Politico reports:  "Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Thursday that President Donald Trump is 'aiding and abetting' Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to sow doubt about the American electoral system."

McMaster expressed himself at length in this interview with MSNBC today:

But of course all this is old news - here's a front page of the New York Daily News two years ago:

You know, 55 percent of non-voters in the 2016 election were Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center.  I'm praying that Democrats will turn out this year in overwhelming numbers so that the election results cannot possibly be challenged.  It's all up to us, fellas - now is the time to overthrow the dictatorship that has already begun.  This is the last chance to stop it - our generation's rendezvous with destiny.  

I was never asked to shed my blood for this country that I love - but I will certainly give my vote.  We are fortunate here in Texas that the state allows walk-in early voting during most of October, 7 days a week in our county.  M.P. and I have already made our plan for when and where to vote.  Have you?

An excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on June 27, 1936 - a masterpiece of Democratic and democratic ideals, well worth reading in full:

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

In this world of ours, in other lands there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.

I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.

I accept the commission you have tendered me. I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war.

Bonus, 10/2/20, 6 a.m.:

Trump and Melania have come down with Covid-19.

What a coincidence.  A perfect excused absence from all other debates.  Which his team surely realizes would only turn off more voters.

Don't be too quick to feel sorry for him.  He has LIED about everything else in the last four years, why not his own health?  Such a convenient excuse to hole up in his bunker and avoid the press and public till Election Day.

Very clever.  But not, I think, clever enough to fool the American people - the sane majority, that is.

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New Year's Eve 2019

It occurred to me yesterday with a shock that after midnight tonight, my life will have spanned eight calendar decades, or parts thereof - though I am only a youngster in my sixties.  How extraordinary.

The years pass by quickly now, as my grandmother warned me they would.  Sometimes one might wish to say, O beautiful time, stop and linger - but like birds on a fence, the moments of life flicker and are gone before one can speak a word.

I had intended to close the year with some philosophical ruminations - but the clock is running out on me, and really, I have nothing new to offer beyond what many other older and wiser men have already said about time and life and love here on this small and fractious planet.

On the whole, it has been a happy year for M.P. and me, despite assorted health problems and financial difficulties at various times - but for the moment all those worries have subsided, and we are spending the holidays in quiet comfort and good cheer, thanks be to God.

So among the anxious changes and chances of this transitory world, I will end by simply wishing all my truckbuddies health, wealth, and happiness in the new year--and I leave you with this timely quotation from the fourth inaugural address of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945:

I remember that my old schoolmaster, Dr. Peabody, said, in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled: "Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights--then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend."

Memo: FDR to Obama

Or, how to get your mojo back, Mr. President. From the New Yorker:

In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt was faced with a vicious reëlection campaign. He was vilified for the New Deal reforms. The word “boondoggle” was popularized in the U.S. the year before to describe alleged abuses of the New Deal. Opposition politicians and critics compared F.D.R. to Lenin. The Depression was still on, and unemployment, which had dropped significantly, was still high, over fourteen per cent. (It would rise again in 1938.) What Roosevelt had going for himself was a real set of policies and the capacity to speak on their behalf—a willed capacity to state things plainly, forcefully, and effectively. Never more so than on September 29, 1936, at the New York Democratic State Convention, in Syracuse. Here is the most famous passage of the speech, which came in the thick of the national campaign:

Let me warn you and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion which says, “Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them—we will do more of them, we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.”

But, my friends, these evaders are banking too heavily on the shortness of our memories. No one will forget that they had their golden opportunity—twelve long years of it.

Remember, too, that the first essential of doing a job well is to want to see the job done. Make no mistake about this: The Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job’s being done.

The full speech is here, and it's well worth a read. Which will prove to you that today's politics are nearabouts identical to what was happening in the 1930's - same song, different verse.

And one more thing - Guys, nothing at all is ever guaranteed in politics. You should be planning NOW not only to cast your own vote, but to do what it takes to get your friends and family to vote too, either on Election Day, by early voting, or by mail. Make it a point to find out the wheres and whens for all that in your precinct, today.

You should be aware that the Republicans all around the country have been doubling down on voter ID laws, hoping to substantially suppress the Democratic vote. Remember that Bush won the entire country in 2000 by virtue of just a few hundred votes in Florida.

History can and does repeat itself. So be fucking sure to get yourself and your nearest and dearest to the polls. Don't think Romney can't win - it takes only your smug complacency to hand him the keys to the White House.

Click to enlarge.  Fanatical FDR-haters didn't accuse him of being a Muslim Communist - they swore he was a Jewish Communist!  (Roosevelt being orginally a German Jewish name, i.e., Rosenfelt - so they said.)  Take a look at this sick anti-semitic shit, and you'll understand that today's ignorant, raving-loon Tea Party is nothing new at all in American life. 

FDR Warns the Nation

Well, isn't this the fucking truth.





Honk to Americablog.

Republican Betrayal

The news that the House of Representatives failed to pass the so-called bailout bill today came as a real shock to me and, I don't doubt, to many other Americans. It just took my breath away.

It was sunk by those Republicans to whom "the free market" is for all practical purposes synonomous with "the will of God." No socialism in America, oh no! We'll watch the whole country crash and burn first, before we betray our oh-so-sacred principles!

In fact, they have betrayed the country, exactly as their Republican grandfathers did in 1929 and the years following: standing firm on their free-market faith while all around them the country sank deeper and deeper into economic misery. And when Roosevelt finally got into office in 1933, they fought his every move tooth and nail, crying socialism all the way.

But as my little grandmother used to say, a sweet, humble soul to whom economics would have been as mysterious as astrophysics, "If it hadn't been for Roosevelt, we'd have all perished to death."

Which gets right to the heart of the matter: pure, unrestrained greed is lethal to the economy and the nation; Roosevelt saved the people from the excesses of the free market, and for that he was beloved by many millions who suffered economic cruelty at the hands of the self-righteous, and highly self-interested, Republican capitalists.

I'm no economist, but I know enough to say that you can't have a completely free or a completely regulated market; a happy medium must be found for the greatest good of the greatest number. The New Deal, it seems to me, was by and large that happy medium until the jackbooted Republicans of the Reagan-Bush-Bush era trampled it underfoot and made the world safe for avarice.

It was chilling to watch the televised press conferences today in the aftermath of the House debacle, with an inset displaying the Dow sinking lower and lower by the minute: down 777 points by close of business. I watched it sink a hundred points with my own eyes, in only 15 minutes of viewing.

Of course, the renegade Republicans who 86'd today's bill are the same who have gone along so blithely with Bush's imperial decrees and power grabs in the past; today they suddenly found the testicular fortitude to defy the President, not to mention the leaders of their own party. But stupidly, they have taken the wrong stand at the wrong time.

Of course, they tried to blame it on the Democrats, and Nancy Pelosi's "partisan" speech before the vote; but good ol' Barney Frank had a brilliant riposte to that.

McCain is also claiming that he charged up to Washington last week and rewrote the first version of the bill and protected the taxpayers, yada yada yada; or at least that's the slick impression his statements and those of his supporters make: rewriting history so soon. The fact is, House Dems and Repubs had a compromise bill already agreed on, and the votes lined up, before he got to Washington; his presence at the White House conference last Thursday emboldened the renegades to drop a bomb on the compromise.

So here we are. I realize that all may yet be well, though with the Jewish holidays, no bill will be passed before next weekend in the best case. But if this country really has slipped off a precipice today, I do hope history records that McCain and the pure-T-free-market Republicans are the ones who gave it the last shove into the darkness.

Bush is the new Hoover. The New York Times editorializes on today's events:

After nearly eight years of voting in virtual lock step with President Bush on everything from tax cuts to torture, House Republicans decided on Monday to break ranks on the survival of the nation’s financial system.

The rejected bailout bill that was on the floor after a weekend of hard negotiating was objectionable in many ways, but it was a Republican-generated bill and was improved from the administration’s original version. Sixty percent of House Democrats voted for the bill, enough to easily pass the measure if the Republicans had not decided to put on their display of pique and disarray.

The question now is whether the stock-market plunge that followed the House’s failure to lead — and a renewed credit freeze — will be enough to get the 133 Republicans who voted against the measure to change their minds. And, more important, whether the damage that the no vote has inflicted is readily reversible.

Republican no votes were rooted less in analysis or principle than in political posturing and ideological rigidity. The House minority leader, John Boehner, conceded as much: “While we were able to move the bill drastically to the right, it wasn’t good enough for our members.”

It’s not clear what would be good enough for the Republicans since there was very little talk of substance on Monday after the bill died on the floor of the House. Instead, the Republicans tried to blame a speech before the vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who connected the current crisis to the fiscal and economic mismanagement of the Bush years. It may not have been the perfect moment to say that, but it was true.

Republicans were also upset that serial bailouts represent a rejection of free-market principles. They do. That’s because the free market in finance, unregulated and unsupervised, has failed. And, in its failure, it is inflicting greater damage on an already weak economy.

No amount of amendments to the bailout package will change the administration’s disastrous economic record or erase the manifest failure of the Republicans’ free-markets-above-all ideology.

Fasten your seat belt. I've a feeling it's going to be a bumpy ride.